“Leadership Is Influence – Nothing More, Nothing Less”

John Maxwell is my mentor and a friend, and this is one of his quotes which is the one that I love the most.

I intentionally focus on one thing when it comes to influencing others: Leadership & Personal growth.

I want to dig a little deeper to explore this.

It is impossible to ignore the importance of personal and professional growth for existing and future leaders.

The key is to stand out from the crowd, the bridge that connects you to the goals you’ve yet to achieve.

The best possible investment in your future is to develop your influence today. To develop your influence, you need to grow daily, and this is the only reason people will follow you.

That’s why your personal and professional development plays a big role here.

Why?

These days’ people want more. And as John Maxwell explains in his book “Leadership Within You 2.0”, people are not going to follow you anymore only because of your higher-level “Position”. 

So, let me show you what I mean here and explain how John Maxwell demonstrates this in “The Five Levels of Leadership Stages” and why leadership & personal growth is crucial in the whole process.

So, let’s explore these stages!

This is the most accessible stage to get to. You don’t need to have any influence or abilities as a leader. After all, anyone can be hired to a position.

So, this is representing your boss. Let’s talk about bosses.
How many times had you had a bad boss? I believe everyone has experienced this. I definitely did. 😉

When you are being asked to do something by your bad boss, and this is something not in your job description, you won’t do it, right? Or if you did, it was because you were scared to lose your job.

Starting with a Position has its advantages, and it’s not a bad place to be, but as long you are not developing the relationship with your people and don’t grow daily, you are in a very dangerous space.
Yes, you are influencing others, but not necessarily in the right way.

REMEMBER

“Position is a good place to start in leadership, but it’s a terrible place to stay.”

Because you are reading this, I know you don’t want to stay at this level. Join my free 45 minutes training, and I will show you how leadership & personal growth! is important and why we need to move to the next stage.

This is the second level that you want to get to. And when you get to that level, in my opinion, you are going in the right direction. A good leader always wants to improve, and being here is when you need to think about who you want to influence and how you want to do it.

When you are at this stage/level, people know you care about them, and they start to believe that you are here because of them. They will follow you without any obligations.
And that’s when “true influence” starts. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”~John Maxwell

You have to gain trust first and build a solid relationship with your audience. Failing to do so, you won’t maintain lasting, effective leadership. People will eventually realise that you don’t do it for them but only for your own benefit.

Would you follow someone who cares only about themselves? I don’t think so!
Continue to grow that relationship and think about how to share the value that will help others.

Simply saying people follow you because you helped them to be productive.

In Johns opinion, almost everyone can be successful on the first two levels. However, if you want to get things done and continue building your influence, you need to get to the third one.

When starting a business, we often have to work hard and spend lots of money on resources before getting to this or even second level. There are times when we feel overwhelmed and want to quit.

Who would like to listen to ME? Who am I that people will want to be around? I don’t have any success, so why anyone will follow me?

How many times have you felt this way and questioned yourself? I did these many times.

But everyone starts from somewhere and building that relationship with others will help you to achieve these levels.

Yes, this is true that some leaders will never get here because they cannot produce results. Quite often is because they lack self–discipline, work ethics, or they don’t have the skill to be productive. And this is another example that personal growth is vital in leadership. 

When you get to level 3 of your leadership and personal development, you will help your team/organisation get things done. Everything you will do will brings your desired result. Finally, you will have the momentum, and everyone in the team/organisation will be winning.

You have been waiting so long for this moment so long. Your team morale is high, and you are starting to win. You are finding yourself in a position when everything becomes more accessible. Suddenly your hard work pays off, and leading the people becomes easier than ever before.

The danger:

Often leaders/organisations with big teams stop there. They feel they have accomplished their mission. I don’t blame them. Would you? Everything is going so well. “People reach goals—profit increases. Morale becomes high. Turnover becomes low. Team loyalty increases.”

What more could you want? But there is more to this and staying at level 3 for too long is not a good thing.

Unfortunately, I have seen this in many, and I called these leaders “not true leaders”. They are so concentrated on themself and their teams that they are missing an essential part in leadership. I will talk about this in the next stage.

Because you are reading this, I believe your traits of a good leader will help you keep in mind that creating results is much better when you care and have a relationship with your people.

Being productive is NOT most important here so, don’t forget about people who follow you, don’t stop building a solid bond/relationship with them.

Lots of leaders don’t even know about this level of influence. They are too busy and focused on themselves (their productivity) and building their teams.

In my journey, I met lots of them and never could explain why this is happening until now.

The reason is that they don’t know any better. I always wanted to find a way to empower others. And this is the level when this is possible, and I will do everything to get here.

At this level, you should focus on identifying and develop as many leaders as you can. You should think about how “I can help someone personally”, and that’s when you win their hearts. Your goal here is to invest in them and help them grow. At this level, leaders put only 20% on their personal productivity and 80% on developing and leading others.

Help people grow personally, and they will admire and appreciate you.

There is one more level to go, but before I explore it, can you see how vital self-growth is in achieving strong leadership/influence?

Personal leadership growth should be your ongoing project.

When you want to achieve the 4th level and separate yourself from good and
become great, you must learn to empower others.

Help people reach their personal potential, help them do their jobs more effectively,
help them become leaders themselves, leading them to reproduction.

To be able to grow others, you have to develop yourself first. You see
again, leadership and personal development are crucial. To help people to grow,
you need to think about how you can do it. Do you have anything on offer that
can help them?

Remember, nobody is great at everything!

You have to find your niche that you want to help others and stick with it.

John Maxwell says that there are eight questions you should ask yourself,
and more questions you answer yes, better chances you have to achieve this 4th
level of personal growth as a leader.  

Do whatever it takes to build your self-growth that you can get here and
stay here.

Here are the questions, but if you want to dive deeper into them, I would recommend reading the “Leadership Within You 2.0” book.

1. “Am I Passionate About My Personal Growth?
2. Does My Growth Journey Have Credibility?
3. Are People Attracted to Me Because of My Growth?
4. Am I Successful in the areas Where I want to Develop Others?
5. Have I Crossed Over the Spend Time/Invest Time Line?
6. Do I Have a Teachable Way of Life?
7. Am I Willing to Be a Vulnerable Role Model and Coach?
8. Do the People I Develop Succeed?”

5. Pinnacle – Respect – People follow because of who you and what you represent.

This is the highest level of leadership and also the most difficult to achieve. I think we all would like to get here. Unfortunately, lots of us won’t. However, you will become a better leader simply by striving for it. You simply cannot achieve Level 5 unless you are ready to commit your life for the long term into the lives of others.

The pinnacle of leadership can only be achieved if you have trained leaders that can achieve such a level themselves. In other words, the pinnacle of leadership is creating a new generation of leaders who are better than you.

Level 5 is the level that not everyone will get to. But if you stay with it, if you constantly focus on both improving yourself at every level and producing leaders who are ready and able to develop other leaders, you may find yourself at the Pinnacle of your career path.

To be at this level, you have to get to the level of significance.

This process can take years to develop. The one thing that you can do is to start today. Don’t wait, and when the opportunity comes, you will be ready for it.

Be a great leader with a strong vision and a solid strategy

Pinnacle leaders stand out from the crowd. Leaders who achieve Level 5—the Pinnacle—are extremely rare. As a culmination of the previous four levels, this level needs a great degree of expertise as well as some inherent leadership abilities.

In order to grow other leaders to Level 4, which is what level 5 leaders accomplish, it requires a great deal of effort. As a result of their long-term leadership, those who achieve Level 5 build an organisation’s “legacy of leadership”.

 To learn more about Levels 1-4, check out The 5 Levels of Leadership.

In my 45 minutes training, I will give you specific steps to amazing growth and how you can get great results starting today. Go and register for my free training now.

P.S. I believe this will make a difference to your success as a leader. Are you ready for this journey?

If you want to chat more about this pick a time on my calendar that works best for you.

Look forward to meeting you.

Edyta